House + Birthday = May Madness

And so it begins.  In addition to the many, many tasks we will have to complete between now and the May 28th closing date on the house, May also marks a month of birthday madness.  Celebrating their entries into the world this month are Ben, Nicole, Melissa and Marika.  This is a month that normally finds us out a lot, celebrating the people we love and we usually start with Ben.  However, with all the goings on around the house and the fact that saving money is a big priority for us right now, Ben decided this year we'd celebrate his birthday in a low key sort of way - with the home inspection.

We met up with the Inspector at the house at 3PM.  I was warned ahead of time that a good home inspection takes about three hours.  This was NOT a lie.  We wrapped up at just about 6 PM.  In the hours in between, I was amazed to realize all the things a home inspector considers when giving a place a clean bill of housing health that would never even have crossed my mind.   The roof, the HVAC and the electrical were no-brainers (and the things that we were most concerned about considering the costs often associated with them), but he noticed things that I had never imagined.  He taught how to stabilize our railing with silicone capping, how to raise an air conditioning unit at no cost, and he shook our deck to make sure it was stable in a way that scared me so badly I ran back into the house while the deck was still moving (not to worry potential visitors, the deck is stable, he just freaked me out!).  But the best part of the whole experience was when he came out of our attic and proclaimed to Ben, "Buy it!" with a thumbs up.  All in all, the inspection went very well and while there are a few things on the list to focus on right away, there were no deal breakers.

But with all the house hubbub, I couldn't let Ben's birthday go by unmarked.  So on our way home, we stopped off at The Pie Gourmet, a happy local bakery that doesn't look like much at all with their 70s-style bakery cases and no frills locale, but man do they know their way around a pie.  Apple, Cherry, French Silk, Boston Cream, you name it, they do it and do it well.  Since it was Ben's 29th we were celebrating, I had ordered his favorite - Key Lime.

It took him less than three minutes from the time we walked in the door to be sitting at the kitchen table with a piece of pie.  A sweet ending to what turned out to be sweet day!